The Election That Wasn't

So this is a timeline I started some time ago, before subsequently abandoning the site, forgetting my old account details, leaving home and taking it up again.

THE ELECTION THAT WASN'T
[FONT=&quot]Or: What If Gordon Holds His Nerve?

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[FONT=&quot]—CHAPTER ONE—[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]‘[/FONT][FONT=&quot]The[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Fight’[/FONT]

Cabinet Room, Downing Street
September 11th, 2007

Ed Balls hurried into the meeting late. Having spent so long as Gordon Brown’s number two at the Treasury, both men were finding the separation enforced by their diverging career paths difficult. Even more so as the election drew closer, Balls found himself juggling his formal role as Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families with his informal one as the prime minister’s gatekeeper. Balls glanced around at the table as he took his seat and saw the familiar faces waiting there; Douglas, Harriet, Ed, Damien, Peter, Alistair… an assembly of the driving force that was the Brown government. Spread over the table was a succession of typed notes; the latest polling reports in marginal constituencies.

“Is it too late to cancel?”

The words caught the assembled company of government ministers, political advisors and party officials by surprise, and Balls noticed a couple of them look up to confirm that it really was the prime minister who’d said them. But it was, and Gordon’s gaze was sweeping around the table; it was as serious question.

For a moment, Balls’ eyes met Ed Miliband’s. The look said it all; Too late to cancel? It was too late by a long way; the party was committed, the preparations made and the strategies ready to be rolled out as soon as the word was given. It was, by an age, too late to cancel. The question was really; “Does Gordon realise it’s far too late?”

The silence was held just long enough for Balls to realise that it was him that they expected to answer.

“Gordon,” Balls began, “we can’t let one poll panic us. The national polls consistently put us ahead and the mood of the country is in our favour. Yes, it’ll be a risk, but it’s one we’ve got to take.”

There was a pause, as Balls shifted to realpolitick mode.

“Gordon, forget all that; the press are expecting an election. If we don’t go to the country, they’ll say you bottled it, whatever we tell them. It’ll define your premiership. We have to go for it.”

It was that last comment that seemed to hit home. The meeting meandered on towards a non-conclusion, but as Balls left the room, he was convinced what the outcome would be.

Would have to be.
 
[FONT=&quot]From The Daily Telegraph, September 17th [/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]BROWN GOES TO THE COUNTRY[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]PM CALLS SNAP ELECTION IN SEARCH OF FOURTH LABOUR TERM[/FONT][FONT=&quot]

[/FONT][FONT=&quot]The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has today asked Her Majesty the Queen for a dissolution of Parliament and a snap general election set for October 11th. Mr Brown, who has served as prime minister since the resignation of Tony Blair just under two months ago, has said that he is confident that the election will return a Labour majority government.

Having acceded to the premiership in an uncontested leadership election, many observers have felt that a general election is necessary to renew the government’s mandate, having promised at the last election that the then-prime minister, Tony Blair, would serve “a full term”. The Leader of the Opposition, Mr David Cameron, has said that he “relishes the opportunity to challenge this stale Labour government” and has said that he is confident of “winning the argument for the British people.”

The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Menzies Campbell has said that this election will mark the beginning of the end for the “two great behemoths of British politics”, and has called on voters to put their trust in the Liberal Democrats.

This election, which comes only two and a half years after the last in 2005, is the first to be faced by any of the party leaders; David Cameron has led the Conservatives since 2005, whilst Menzies Campbell has led the Liberal Democrats since 2006.

The latest opinion polls put Labour on 38%, the Conservative Party on 34% and the Liberal Democrats on 15%.
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I've seen a few of these and looking forward to another. Interesting to see how this will play out, of course a major difference will be that the Lib Dems will do much worse than 2005 and OTL 2010 with Ming Campbell in charge. At this point there was mounting pressure for him to go and he just wasn't getting through to the electorate. So I think you can safely add 20 extra Tory-Lib Dems marginals to however the straight Tory-Labour fight plays out.
 
An extract from False Starts and New Beginnings: The Conservatives in the Wilderness
The accession of Gordon Brown to the premiership changed the nature of the game significantly. The thin Conservative poll lead built up by Cameron evaporated in Brown’s first few months in office and the possibility of a historic fourth Labour term started to look ever more likely. Compared to Blair, Brown was a fresh face, and diluted the Conservative monopoly on “new starts” and fresh ideas. Meanwhile, momentum was building in the government for a snap general election, to take advantage of the new government’s “honeymoon” period and to wrongfoot the Conservative opposition.

Cameron had had only two years to put his own stamp on the party, and there was a general consensus amongst figures close to the Leader of the Opposition that the project to “decontaminate” the party was still incomplete. The public trusted David Cameron himself, but were less sure about the party that he led. Recognising this, CCHQ organised perhaps the most presidential campaign in British memory, even more so than Blair’s in 1997.
Early in the campaign, the Conservative Party made a public call for prime ministerial debates, hoping that Cameron, widely acknowledged as the best communicator of the three party leaders, could win back some much needed ground in a debate setting. Labour, however, remained hostile, and without Liberal Democrat support, the idea floundered. Instead, a Question Time special was aired with the three party leaders answering questions. Though Cameron was believed to have done the best in this contest, its impact on the result was not considered great and the election was instead dominated by the kind of set-piece occasions that had marked previous campaigns.

The thrust of the Conservative campaign was a countrywide tour by the party leader, consisting of both set-piece speeches and Q-and-As, whilst virtually all election material featured the word “Cameron” far larger and more prominently than “Conservative”. One of the Conservative party political broadcasts was entirely given over to David Cameron, inviting perhaps inevitable comparisons with “Kinnock: The Movie”. The film mainly consisted of his 2005 Conference speech, intercut with segments of David and Samantha Cameron talking about themselves. Though mocked in the quality press as superficial, it was seen as a success amongst voters, and Cameron’s personal opinion polling jumped ahead of both Brown’s and Campbell’s almost overnight.

The Labour campaign, meanwhile, has been characterised as lacking in energy, appearing sluggish and static in the media spotlight. The slow-motion collapse of Northern Rock shook public confidence, and with it the government’s approval rating. The poll lead enjoyed by the Party at the dissolution gradually seeped away, and by election night, few pundits knew which way to call it.
 
The “Cameron Express”, Conservative Party battle-bus, Guildford, October 10th 2007
Sitting in the Conservative Party “battle bus”, David Cameron moved his fingers slowly under his eyes. He felt more tired than he could ever remember; indeed, he couldn’t remember when he had last had a decent night’s sleep. Still, it was nearly over; just another day or so and then the result would be known. And then, electorate willing, the real fight would begin…

Cameron reached over to pick up a copy of that morning’s Daily Telegraph; it was crumpled and battered almost beyond recognition, and glanced over the opinion poll tracker. As ever, the polls put the Tories around 2 or 3% below Labour, but he tried not to pay too much attention to them. He’d been a special advisor in 1992, and watched the party snatch a glorious victory from the jaws of defeat. They could do it again if they had to. With a swish of brakes, the bus pulled to a halt, and a flurry of movement headed towards the doors.

Cameron sighed. Just one more speech, he told himself…
 
The BBC’s “Election Night Studio”, October 11th 2007
David Dimbleby sat, somewhat uncomfortably, on his perch on the balcony. Around him, state of the art graphics displayed predictions, calculations, extrapolations and—more often than he cared to admit—outright guesses as to individual seats or the results of the election. Below him, Jeremy Vine was doing his best impression of a weather reporter, showing a possible Liberal Democrat front that was moving westerly and meeting a Tory anticyclone centred around Guildford. It was daft, it really was. Just this election, and maybe the one after that, Dimbleby thought, and then do something new. Let somebody else man the Star Trek command centre.

Dimbleby turned towards the camera as more breaking news came through his live earpiece.

“And we’re just going to cut to South Basildon and Thurrock, where incumbent Labour candidate, Angela Evans Smith, has narrowly scraped through to continue as the constituency’s MP.

“Basildon, of course, became famous for first upsetting the predictions in the 1992 general election, when Prime Minister John Major…”
 
Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath count, 12th October 2007
The Prime Minister glanced at the flickering screen. The early results had been good, but the swings had been all over the place; the BBC were now adding so many disclaimers to their projections they might as well not have bothered. Another red ribbon lit up the screen, and the prediction moved five seats in Labour’s favour…

“That’s it,” he murmured to the Labour Party worker beside him.

“I think we might just have made it.”
 
The BBC’s “Election Night Studio, 12th October 2007
“And our prediction is just being revised to take in account that swing and… yes, the computer is still predicting a hung Parliament, with Labour as the largest party; the closest election in a generation. We’re predicting that Labour will take 306 seats, the Conservatives 275 and the Liberal Democrats 37. I should stress that this is only a prediction, but it would mean that only a government led by Labour could mathematically command a Parliamentary majority.

“It’s certainly looking like a bad night for the Liberal Democrats, something many observers have blamed on party leader Sir Menzies Campbell’s lacklustre campaign. I’m live with the Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesman, Nick Clegg, one of the lucky ones to have been safely re-elected in his seat of Sheffield Hallam.” Dimbleby swivelled to face the screen where the boyish Liberal Democrat shadow minister had appeared.

“Mr Clegg…”

***

Which brings us to the end of Chapter 1...

Any comments? Criticisms? Suggestions?
 
Seems to be going like the predecessor but I was always sceptical about whether Brown would have really staked his government's future on something as unpopular as the Lisbon Treaty.

Then again I will admit to bias so perhaps I'm not the one you should talk to. I'm guessing Labour's majority is in the single digits?
 
Seems to be going like the predecessor but I was always sceptical about whether Brown would have really staked his government's future on something as unpopular as the Lisbon Treaty.

Then again I will admit to bias so perhaps I'm not the one you should talk to. I'm guessing Labour's majority is in the single digits?

Oh, this is about as far as it goes before it diverges rather sharply from the first version... I got rather frustrated at how closely I was paralleling OTL last time round; I never got to the real divergence in '08 and '09. Here, I've gone deliberately for 'different' right from after the election, as Chapter 2 will show. Amongst other things, Lisbon really ain't going to be such a big issue in the rewrite.
 
[FONT=&quot]—CHAPTER TWO—[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]‘[/FONT][FONT=&quot]The[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Morning After'
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Edinburgh
October 13th, 2007
The light was sharp in the eyes of Sir Menzies Campbell as the Liberal Democrat leader awoke. He had slept fitfully since going to sleep only a matter of hours ago, and half-formed ideas, thoughts and notions kept crowding into his head. He vaguely remembered having spoken to Gordon Brown before going to bed, but there had been little actual conversation—the prime minister instead launching into a lecture about ‘common purposes and values’. He’d said he’d call today to talk further—and to talk turkey.

Last night, Brown had even gone so far as to use the c-word—‘coalition’ and Campbell’s heart had skipped a beat. The results of the election had been disappointing for the Liberal Democrats—gutting, even—but if the most tribal of Labour politician was willing to discuss realignment, this could be a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Only a matter of hours ago, Campbell was contemplating resignation. Now, he could imagine a different ending; ‘the man who led the Liberal Democrats back to the government’.

Bleary eyed and groggy, Campbell got to his feet and scrabbled around on the bedside table for his mobile phone. He needed to put together a negotiating team…
 
An extract from Liberal Democrats in Government—The Coalition in Full, Nick Clegg
Ming was very aware that we had to show the public that negotiations in a hung parliament could be carried out professionally and speedily, or else risk forever discrediting pluralist government, and the day after the election, he formed the team that would carry out the first stage of the negotiations. Led by Ed Davey, then serving as his chief of staff, the group also consisted of Vince Cable as Deputy Leader, myself, Chris Huhne and Simon Hughes as Party President. Some degree of preparation had been done during the election campaign, but as the group convened on that Friday, there was still much to decide. Was our goal for full coalition, or some sort of confidence-and-supply deal? If the former, how much to compromise to get it? If the latter, how much could we really walk away from?

When the group first met with Ming, the sentiments of everyone were very much in harmony; that full coalition should be our goal, and that we should be prepared to compromise on individual policies, but not on core values. Rather than prepare a ‘shopping list’ of policies, we quickly decided that the gist of our values and of the 2007 Manifesto could be distilled into four core areas that would be essential to securing an agreement; health, a fairer tax system, the abolition of tuition fees and constitutional reform. These four areas would then form the basis for negotiations with Labour.

The Labour team, we soon learned, was to consist of Harriet Harman, Alistair Darling, Ed Miliband, Jack Straw and Andrew Adonis. Anxious to make significant progress as soon as possible, Ming and Gordon Brown agreed that we would meet for a preliminary meeting that afternoon, with real negotiations expected to begin on Saturday. We met in a suite of offices at the Cabinet Office at three that afternoon for about an hour, during which time our team outlined the priorities we had already identified, and the Labour team tabled a paper that outlined a vague four-year plan for a coalition government. We adjourned without much discussion of either paper, and resolved to meet again the next morning.
 
Ummmm..... is anybody else reading this? I'd just appreciate knowing if anyone is interested....
I am. I don't think I saw the first one, so I'm not comparing to the previous incarnation. At present, this looks interesting and well written. I look forward to seeing more.
 
Glad to see this has returned, although they have less seats this version may be preferable for Labour in the long term.
 
Thanks--just didn't want to be writing into the ether...

An extract from
Reform: The coalition agreement (draft)

foreword
The results of the general election show a progressive majority of opinion in country, but also a majority in favour of co-operation between parties. We recognise that this is a significant moment in the governance of Britain, and recognise that the people of Britain have sought a government of consensus, not division.

We recognise that in order to form a government that is both strong and responsive; a coalition government on a joint programme of government between our two parties is necessary and desirable. This agreement represents an undertaking to participate in government together, whilst retaining our distinct views and identity.

The programme we have agreed represents an agreement, not a compromise. It is a radical, reformist programme for a four-year term, deliverable in that time, whilst laying the foundations for future reform to come. It is a programme that places people first, and is centred around the key values common to both the Labour and Liberal Democrat Parties of fairness and freedom. It is an ambitious programme, and it will require trust on all parts in order to carry out, but it is fundamentally a programme in which we have confidence.

There is much to do, but much to hope for as well, and we therefore jointly commend this programme to you.

Gordon Brown
Leader of the Labour Party

Menzies Campbell

Leader of the Liberal Democrats
 
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